Sportive Etiquette

there's a convention in biology to use capitals for things like HIV, AIDS, HPV etc.

then with worm biology there's the convention to use italics and lower case for gene names dumpy (based on a worm's phenotype). and abbreviations dpy-1 for the gene product.

it all goes a little crazy with flies.

sorry. but when you're talking biology, which was what i was picking up on with your Aids/AIDS thing, I think you might be wrong.

happy for sopaRIVA to pile in, and also any other biological peeps.

yep.
fly geneticists were by and large, clearly in it for the naming laughs.